Announcement

**Jake** · 21 April 2000, 02:34

I think maybe I found the answer.

In the user guide it states that the LED lights up "whenever there is activity on the SCSI bus".

ftp://ftp.adaptec.digisle.net/manuals/user_guides/aha2940u2w_ur.pdf

But why does it not light up when loading data to memory from the CD-ROM? For example when I play a CD-rom game with the cd in the plextor PX-40TS drive and the game loads data (not audio) from the cd the controller LED does NOT light up??????? Only the LED on the CD-drive flashes! STRANGE! Isn't that "SCSI bus activity"?

This can mean one of two things:

1. The LED only light up when there is HDD activity.

2. The LED lights up HDD activity OR when two peripherals connected are exchangeing data.
(Meaning anytime except when loading from a CD-drive to memory)

Wadda-you-think?

Cheers,

Jake

------------------
Who is General Failiure and why is he reading my drive?
----------------------
MGA-G400DH 32Mb Mill., Abit BF6 mobo bios ver. QJ, PIII-450@558, 128Mb PC-133 SDRAM, 17" Hitachi monitor, Plextor 40TS CDROM, Plextor 8/20 CDR. Diamond MX300 A3D PCI soundcard, Adaptec AHA-2940U2W, Seagate Cheetah 9.1 GB LVD HDD, Quantum Fireball ST 6.4 GB UDMA33 HDD

**Jake** · 21 April 2000, 07:12

Oooh silly me!

I was visiting a friend when I posted the first two times. But now I'm home and for the first time realised that the controller LED does in fact light up WHENEVER the controller uses the CD-drives or HDD. But I had never noticed the LED flashing when accessing the CD-ROM, because the light is much dimmer than when it's accessed in games. Silly me! I guess reading a whole CD track continously just makes it light up more brightly than the burst reading that occours during normal access (when playing games that access the CD).

Anyway I would still like to verify that the HDD is not being accessed when it's not supposed to during on-the-fly copying.

Why do I persist on this? Well, before I bought the SCSI Hdd and 2940 controller, I frequently (almost every time) produced coasters when doing on-the-fly burning. Just want to make it can't happen again even though the Cheetah's sustained throughput is four times better than my old IDE UDMA/33 drive and thus better able to handle the workload when I do other stuff besides burning.

Still no suggestions?

Sorry about the extremely long rant. I just felt the issue needed clarification.

Jake

**Guyver** · 21 April 2000, 19:00

Jake,

I believe that the key to finding out about disk activity, would be to get one of those fancy programs that displays pseudo-leds for each HD on the scsi chain... There may even be one included with the EZ-SCSI software, I'm not sure. Otherwise take a listen for the HD, it usually makes a distinctive sound when being accessed. I know my Quantum Atlas 10K's sure do...

Hope this helps somewhat... I know I liked my rig with the 2940U2W....

Guyver

------------------
OK, Here's the rig...

ABIT BE6
PC Power & Cooling 425W ATX PS
PIII650E@866 (1.65V) with Alpha P3125S Cooler and 2 27CFM 4500RPM+ Fans
2xVantec Slot Coolers (40CFM each)
2x128MB PC133HSDRAM
2xQuantum Atlas 10K Ultra160/m 18.2GB Drives
Adaptec ASC-29160 Ultra160/m controller
Matrox G400MAX (not OC'd)
MAG DX-715T
SBLive!Retail
3Com 3CR990-TX-95 NIC
3Com USRobotics 56K Voice Faxmodem Pro (USB/Serial)
HP Deskjet 895CXi (USB/Parallel)
HP 6200Cse Scanner (USB/SCSI)
Iomega ZIP 100 ATAPI, HP 8200i ATAPI
Matshita 3X DVDROM ATAPI
Kenwood 52X TrueX Ultra SCSI
Cambridge Soundworks DTT2500 Dolby Digital Sound System

Did I get too much? No!
Did I spend too much? (Total package about 5.5KUSD) - I'd say that's a Yes!
Am I having too much fun? Absolutely!

**Jake** · 21 April 2000, 20:05

Thanks Guyv!

I thought of using the Adaptec EZ-SCSI software too, but dismissed it as I thought it would flash on every type of bus activity. I will try that later today anyway and maybe take the cover off my tower (again) and try listening for HDD activity when burning.

Btw. Your rig TOTALLY blows HUGE salty chunks! There is one thing I was wondering about however. Why did you buy a single channel controller when you have two SCSI HDDs? And why do you have two IDE (CDR/DVD) devices in your system? Kinda blows the idea of SCSI. Don't you need true parrallel multitasking? Well, maybe you could not afford it....

(I'm KIDDING!!! your rig is really nice.)

Thanks a bunch,

Jake

------------------
Who is General Failiure and why is he reading my drive?
----------------------
MGA-G400DH 32Mb Mill., Abit BF6 mobo bios ver. QJ, PIII-450@558, 128Mb PC-133 SDRAM, 17" Hitachi monitor, Plextor 40TS CDROM, Plextor 8/20 CDR. Diamond MX300 A3D PCI soundcard, Adaptec AHA-2940U2W, Seagate Cheetah 9.1 GB LVD HDD, Quantum Fireball ST 6.4 GB UDMA33 HDD

**SCompRacer** · 21 April 2000, 22:47

It's only money, eh Guyver? Did you test those 160's yet with HD tach or EZ SCSI? Would like to hear some real world numbers.

------------------
ASUS P3B-F * P III 500 * 256MB ECC RAM * Two Cheetah LVD's * Barracuda UW * DiamondMAX IDE * Plextor Ultraplex 40max/Plexwriter 12/4/32 * Hitachi IDE DVD * 2940U2W * SB Live * 3Com 905B-TX NIC * 3Com Courier V. * Hollywood + * Win 98SE, Win 2000 *

**Guyver** · 23 April 2000, 06:17

The IDE devices were basically freebies...

I have a buddy who buys pallets of goodies from a major brand computer vendor.. Sometimes I help "test" these components, and for my efforts, I get dibs on somethings or others...

Will be porting to all SCSI sometime in the near future... But then, what do I do with all 4 of my IDE ports on the BE6 and BE6-II motherboards?

Also, have an engineering sample PIII meant for a 133Mhz bus without clock-lock (multiplier locking)....

Haven't done much with HD-Tach lately, but I don't think it is that much faster than the 2940U2W... The difference will be when 64Bit PCI comes mainstream.

I will say one thing. At the last game-fest (lan-party) that I went to, my cous (who works for that same major computer manufacturer) and his friend (a coworker) both had brand new shiny Athlon 1Ghz systems, and I averaged between 1-4 seconds faster loading levels in UT...

Any recommendations on a good SCSI DVD player that has all the good audio connections for my SBLive!?

Same goes for the SCSI CDRW...

Guyv

**Guyver** · 23 April 2000, 06:21

I ran ez-scsi's benchmark and was able to sustain a little over 25,000KB/s per drive (simultaneously running on both drives) for a combined throughput of a little over 50,000KB/s....

Guyv

**SCompRacer** · 23 April 2000, 09:09

No harm in having a couple of IDE devices. I disabled the secondary IDE to get an IRQ, while I have a HD and DVD CD ROM on the Primary. The CD ROM is UDMA, so it does not bring the hard drive down.

I got them from a PC I built for a guy. He was down on bucks when he came to get it, so out came the Hollywood + and DVD CD ROM and I just kept them.

As far as SCSI CD/CD RW I like Plextor. The Plexwriter 12/4/32 has been a great addition to my system. I got the Ultraplex 40max instead of the 40Wide to keep the cabling simpler, and it still feeds the CD R at 12X. No idea about SCSI DVD, but someday...along with the Ultra160 stuff.

I have two Cheetahs, a second and third generation. The later one will do 25,000 while the earlier 18,000. No difference in benchmarks from onboard SCSI to the P3B-F/2940U2W card I upgraded to.

**Jake** · 24 April 2000, 01:45

Hi!

I'm a really sad person. Been on a small Easter vacation with the family to Copenhagen the last couple of days.
Right now, I'm supposed to be enjoying a visit to a place called The Experimentarium where you can participate in all kinds of fun experiments involving the primary sciences and a few unexplained phenomena. Then I accidently stumple on their NetCafé and just had to check if anything good has been posted here in the last few days. SAD! I know!

Anyway, Before I left I found out that the Seagate Chettah actually has a pin out on the back of the harddrive itself to attach. That will surely restrict "flashing" to HDD activity.

On the subject of IDE devices, I still have my old 6.4 GB Quantum Fireball ST, now mounted in a drivebay, so I don't have to log around halv a dusin CD's every time one of the friends "accidently" deletes a vital DLL or othervise FUBARS their systems. I managed to convince most of my homies to get the same setup. Othervise there would not be much of a point in this setup.

Ramble, ramble.... Are you sleeping now?

Enjoy Easter,

Jake

**MultimediaMan** · 27 April 2000, 18:50

Removable media SCSI devices are polled by the Adapter every few (Three, I think) seconds. If you have the "Auto-Insert Notification" checked on the CD-ROM properties in the device manager (Plextor drives are automatically set to this.) Watch how slow your system gets when you insert a blank piece of media in the CD-R and run your burning software or Windows Explorer. The adapter tries in vain to read the media.

I run a 3 channel SCSI setup for burning...I suffer along with REALLY slow CD-ROMs and CD-Rs. Each of the 4.5GB WD HDDs are on the AIC 7895 controller (Basically an onboard Adaptec 2940U2W), while the CD-R/CD-ROMs are on the 2930U. EZ CD-Creator is running off of a temp file on the #2 channel. In the near future, the Panachronic CD-R will be replaced with a Plexwriter, and I will add an UltraPlex Wide CD-ROM on channel #2 of the AIC7895. Since all the adapters are busmasters, the CPU doesn't really have much to do as far as keeping track of them goes.

------------------
My (Current) Primary system:

Abit BE6 (PL BIOS)
P3 450
384MB PC-100 SDRAM (Non-ECC)
Matrox Marvel G200-TV AGP (NTSC) 16Mb w/ HW-DVD Module v2.6 BIOS
3Com 905B-TX NIC
SBlive (W/ OD I/O Card, Liveware 3.0 + Update)
ADS Cadet Radio Data AM/FM Card (8 Bit ISA)
3x WD AC28400 EIDE HDDs (ATA66 Enabled)
Creative DVD5241E EIDE 5x DVD-ROM
M/S Windows 98SE (English)
DirectX 7a

My (Current) Secondary system

Data General/ ALR 2650 Mobo (v6.004 BIOS)
2x P2 266 (SMP)
128 MB PC-100 SDRAM (ECC)
2 x Creative Savage 4 32MB PCI Adapters
3COM 905B Onboard Adaptec AIC7895
Onboard Intel 82558 NIC
Onboard Cirrus Logic SVGA adapter (Disabled)
Adaptec 2930U SCSI Adapter
Creative ModemBlaster 5630 Data/Voice/Fax Modem (PCI)
Creative SBLive! (Full Version)
2x WD 4.5 GB Enterprise SCSI3 HDD
Panasonic LK-MW602 CD-R
Nakamichi MBR 7.4
Windows 98SE/NT Server Dual boot
DirectX 7a/SP-6

Tertiary system:
Dell Inspiron 7100 Laptop

**Jake** · 2 May 2000, 22:52

C.K.,

Thanks for sharing your experiences. I have been running CDRWIN with an 8mb cache as this is what Goldehawk recommends on a 128Mb machine.

I did in fact move the HDD LED the the pinout on the drive itself. That totally isolated "flashing" to HDD activity. Just what I wanted. My conclusion is that there is almost no HDD activity on my system when burning on-the-fly. That makes me fell safer when doing other stuff at the same time.

One question, though: Does you Plextor drives not have have seperate activity LED on the front? Both my CDR and CD-ROM have seperate LED's that flash when the media is being read. THey also have LED's for "media inserted" and the CDR has not one, but two LED that light up when recording.

So on my system there is no need for seperate indication of CDR or CD-ROM activity. Thus no need for a SCSI bus LED.

I have tried fiddling with Windows vcache before, but dismissed it as therer was no noticeable difference in speed. Maybe I should try it again to improve stability, when multitasking. What's that easy to use vcache util called. Is it Cacheman?

Thanks,

Jake

**MultimediaMan** · 3 May 2000, 06:35

Yeah, Cacheman v3.7 I think is the latest version. Nice utility, and it really does help.

One other little tweak you can try if you have gawd awful amounts of RAM is to insert this line in your SYSTEM.INI file, under the [386Enh] section, enter this line: "ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1" w/o quotes.

This will REALLY shrink or even 0 byte the swap file on your computer.

Make sure you have cacheman settings running, otherwise you can find yourself leaking memory all over the place.

**Jake** · 4 May 2000, 13:48

C.K.,

Have you tried software RAID 0 in W2k?
If you have, is it any good?

Whats flatulence? (don't own an english dictionary)

Cheers,

Jake

**MultimediaMan** · 4 May 2000, 18:11

Uh...Flatulence = Release of intestinal gasses, a FART.

Announcement

Adaptec AHA-2940U2W problems when burning on the fly! Guyver?

Adaptec AHA-2940U2W problems when burning on the fly! Guyver?

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